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Tuesday, 16 April 2013

What I learned in my first year of self-publishing

Back in 2011 when I was getting ready to finish up my first
book, I was starting the process of querying agents and learning about the book
market. On the guidance of my older brother—he is making six or seven figures for
an international bookseller, so I figured his advice was pretty solid—I decided
to self-publish. From what I came to learn, self-publishing is an incredibly
fertile industry to get into at this point in time, if and only if you’ve got
the chops to be noticed.

After a year in the business, including free promotional
downloads there are in the neighborhood of 1400 copies of my books in Kindles
and Nooks and paperback out there in peoples’ hands. I’m not breaking any
records or paying rent with it yet, but I’ll break down for you how I went
about selling my books and what I’ve learned from my first twelve months.

Anyone who spends a little time in the publishing industry,
even (especially) at the entry level, will know that it’s full of self-starters
of varying degrees of skill and commitment. Writing is still and probably
always will be perceived as a very romantic endeavor. There are no shortage of
conferences and workshops where aspiring authors can write out a check hoping
to uncover the secret of writing a really good book, or make much-coveted
business contacts with gatekeepers. The Kindle store shelves are overflowing
with handy get-rich-quick guides to making it big in self-pub, claiming they’ll
teach you the magic formula to getting your work noticed on a large scale.

While some of the techniques learned from these sources can be helpful to apply to your
strategy, for the most part the low level of publishing is a pool filled with
sharks, eager and able to make good money on exploiting the big dreams and
gullibility of wannabe writers. The adage is spend money to make money, but I
am not the sort of person to make an investment unless I expect to get a
return. It’s entirely possible to dump all of your savings on courses,
conferences and power summits; books on how to write the next Harry Potter or
skyrocket your Twitter follower count; or for the particularly shady, straight
up purchasing the illusion of an audience by buying followers and Amazon
reviews.

Building an audience, really
building a following, is a slow and organic process. Unless your book looks and
reads like complete trash (as unfortunately a ton of self-pubs do), chances are
there is a healthy market out there for you to tap into if you get creative. What
a ton of other indie authors don’t seem to grasp is that there is no quick
route to success for the vast majority of us. I personally know a handful of
indie pubs with ten times my twitter follower count, cultivated through
diligent follow-backing and sniffing out potential customers via hashtags to go
for hard sells; my sales are equal or even eclipse their numbers in virtually
every case. I set up a ‘business’ Twitter account to try this approach, and it
took me all of ten minutes before I realized I was doing little more than
making myself look like an asshole.

When was the last time you actually clicked on a banner ad?
How would you react if some stranger came at you over Twitter with an Amazon
link? Visibility is important, but I’ve found hard sells to be effectively
useless. The vast majority of customers find their entertainment through word
of mouth. For me, at least, the key to success on social media has been through
the lessons laid down and frequently ignored in How to Win Friends and Influence People. Act like a human being
rather than a spambot and people are far more likely to engage—it’s slow, but
it works. On whatever platform you’re using, make it easy for people to find
your books and website via a few clicks and then just join the conversation. It
is indeed a good idea to find new people to follow by searching hashtags or
mentions of your favorite authors or subjects—just follow people and then wait
for an opportunity to converse with them rather than immediately inundate them
with your shit. You have to remember you are dealing with other humans with
their own wants, needs, and ambitions, and helping you to become a bestselling
sensation is not high on their list of priorities. Is your primary motivation
to make money, or to entertain people?

My biggest kicks in publicity came from approaching people
with built-in audiences that were willing to point their fanbases in my
direction, even briefly. I lucked out early in Dead Roots’ life by approaching author Neil Gaiman to retweet a
link to my book and help me make some money to buy groceries. A little shameless,
sure, but I wasn’t lying—I really was broke as hell. I got about forty sales on
the day from that retweet, but the publicity from it has followed me since. I
still run into people on Goodreads or self-pub forums that say they found my
book on Neil Gaiman’s Twitter. Some of the sales I get now are still those
people who put it on their wishlist or tucked the name away in some corner of
their memory for later. If you can find influencers with strong audience
crossover like this they can be invaluable for getting your foot in the door.

I’m always on the lookout for new ways to reach the
audience. I booked a table in the back room of a small horror convention in
Sacramento, timing it with a KDP Select free weekend and riding on the back of
Neil Gaiman’s shout-out to a fantastic number of downloads. I am a big fan of
the Silent Hill video games, so I approached the admin of one of the biggest Silent
Hill fansites about potential promotion; they were gracious enough to give me
not only a front page blurb, but also invited me to appear on their podcast,
getting me firmly in with a large number of like-minded fans. Some of them even
read! Creativity, opportunism, and most importantly tact are the key to getting
influencers to help you out.

The successes I’ve had with my books have required me to
have rock-solid confidence in my abilities and my product, as well as always
keep in mind that it’s not all about me. Networking is about leaving your
comfort zone and embracing new friendships. Pestering people, going
door-to-door with the sole intent to hard sell them your garbage has never been
the way to success, and I suppose it’s just the nature of things that this
simple tenet of business will continue to be ignored by the majority.

When I’m not writing, I’m reading. I turned my flaky reading
habits into a steady diet of novels and short stories in all genres. It’s an
extremely common piece of advice that you need to read a lot if you want to
write; but sometimes people leave out the fact that you can’t only read what
you’re familiar with. Make a Goodreads profile and try something that somebody
else is reading. Look at how other authors do things and take the techniques
you like. Read poetry, it’ll make your prose better. Study the bestsellers and
the cult hits. Figure out what you can give your audience that’s unique and
interesting.

What it all boils down to is that success in self-publishing
requires striving to be a better and stronger person. You have to embrace the
unfamiliar. You have to be creative. Don’t settle and don’t compromise with yourself.
Make yourself excellent. Write honestly, write something amazing that means
something to you, not to please a market.

If you want to break into publishing, then kick the fucking
door down. What are you waiting for?